A strip of phreatophytic vegetation (forest, forest plantation or urban "green strip") transpires pore water from an aquifer and draws down a shallow phreatic surface. Analytical and numerical 2D models for saturated and saturated-unsaturated seepage in a vertical plane are developed and utilized for determination of the water table troughs, flow nets, isotachs, isobars, and isohumes. The hodograph method and HYDRUS2D are used. The bioengineering drainage by root water uptake is advocated as a hydroecologically sustainable, economically viable, zero-(manmade)-energy consuming, carbon-sequestration-favourable and anti-waterlogging efficient tool in agro and urban greening practices. Such drainage checks the phreatic surface and volumetric moisture content in the root zone of perched urban aquifers in arid environments where groundwater inundation is a threat, while other types of engineering drainage are precarious. The earlier published Russian HYDRUS1D modeling results on vertical moisture fluxes from water tables of different depths, vadose zone texture and land cover (forest-no forest) are revisited and recomputed with the help of Pashkovsky's empiric formula that allows demarcation the hydrological regimes of "recharge gains" and "evapotranspirative losses".